Famke Janssen on ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ Return: ‘Stay Tuned’

After creating a sense of disappointment for Daredevil fans looking forward to new film adaptation, Twentieth Century Fox made a major announcement last week regarding the Marvel properties they’re keeping and pushing forward with. Mark Millar (Wanted, Kick-Ass) will be helping consult for Fox’s own Marvel cinematic universe, beginning with next year’s The Wolverine and the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past and Fantastic Four reboot.

For X-Men, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Days of Future Past will offer a centering point for all of the series installments over the years to connect together. While casting announcements have yet to official roll in, Patrick Stewart practically confirmed that he’s returning and now Famke Janssen is teasing a similar possibility for her return as Jean Grey.

MTV chatted with Famke Janssen about her film Bringing up Bobby (that she wrote and directed) and dropped the obligatory X-Men inquiry.

“One never knows. Jean Grey, the Phoenix … she finds a way to reincarnate herself constantly, so one never knows.”

While playing coy, she followed this up by saying she’s not in a position to chat about it, but to “stay tuned.” It stands to reason that all of the cast members from the trilogy who Singer and Vaughn are planning to see return have been spoken too, especially considering the established relationships between Singer, cast and crew. Singer of course, hinted that by approaching the X-Men: First Class sequel with bigger picture ideas (i.e. Days of Future Past time travel story from the comics) in mind to flesh out and expand the X-Men universe, they could tie together the films and make sense of the continuity and timelines established thus far.

X-Men: Days of Future Past begins production in the new year so expect more quotes and reports from the other cast members of the original trilogy (and X-Men: First Class). I expect Hugh Jackman will be questioned the most since they’re still shooting The Wolverine for a release next summer and he will be subject to the most press.

As for Famke returning as Jean Grey. X-Men: The Last Stand ended with her demise, much like Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, but as in the comics books, there’s no such thing as true death in the X-Men universe and since the story of Days of Future Past deals with time travel, there are easy ways to tell another story in a different period in time, or even a different reality that can bring all of the familiar faces back. Heck, they can even overwrite X-Men 3 with Bryan Singer’s vision of what that film should have been.

The Wolverine hits theaters July 26, 2013. X-Men: Days of Future Past hits theaters on July 18th, 2014.

I feel adding this storyline is just rushing everything now. They had a good premise from the ending of First Class to begin with and now they want to try to bring everything full circle at once. Maybe a third or fourth film would have worked with this, it just seems like the easy way out.

Well, they gotta do it now. It has been 12 years since the first X-Men movie and 6 since the The Last Stand. They can’t do more First Class sequels for ten more years and only then bring them together. The cast of the original trilogy isn’t getting any younger, which is especially true for Patrick Stewart.

10 months ago there were articles going around saying the First Class sequel would focus heavily on Xavier. 7 months it changed to Magneto being the main focus. In either scenario it was always implied that Fassenbender, McAvoy and the rest of the First Class cast would be back. They also said they would not be adding many more characters to the sequel, but now with the apparent shift over to the Days of Future Present story line it sounds like something akin to the attempts to use original Star Trek members in Next Generation movies.

I really hope there is a good script behind this because it seems like this film could turn out to be the train wreck that makes people forget the train wreck X-3 turned out to be.

No you are not. I don’t care for the comics, so the story of X-Men 3 and any deviation from the comics was perfectly fine with me. It was weaker than the first two movies, no doubt, but it was far from bad.

I hope this will be good but I wish Marvel would find a way and retrieve the rights to Fantastic Four and X-Men. Fox is going to completely milk X-Men for all its worth and by the time Marvel gets it back, it wont mean anything. I’m pretty optimistic about the Fantastic Four reboot since Josh Trank is involved but still, Marvel needs to get these guys back. Along with Ghost Rider from Columbia. I’m fine with Spider Man for now, I loved Amazing Spider-Man.

Problem with that is if Marvel Studios owned X-Men and FF we wouldn’t get movies for them right now since they can only make two a year.

This is why Daredevil won’t get a movie anytime soon and why it’s so hard to get Ant-Man, Dr. Strange, Black Panther of the ground, etc. because there’s literally no resources and production time.

If they did make X-Men, they’d have to drop Thor or Cap, etc., cannibalizing themselves. That’s the reason Avi Arad intentionally distributed the licenses to characters to different studios back in the ’90s.

I think that, with the success of the Avengers (and hopefully the Phase 2 movies), Marvel will be growing and branching out into different sections. I think they can let different parts of the studios do their thing and come together every so often for team-ups. IMO that is only a few years off. You can’t ignore money makers of this magnitude.

If you erased the X-Men movies from existence you probably would erase The Avengers, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man etc. along with it. There is this little logical problem called causality and without the success of X-Men the avalanche of great comic book movies would never have gotten into motion. Well, perhaps at some point much later in the future.

Bring in Sentinels! and Apocolypse, they are the best enemies of the x-men by far and could do so many things with. Xmen3 well, less said about that film the better, with this new “Days of Future Past” could wipe the slate clean and start a fresh, both with the current new xmen franchise, and bring back all the old school in a seperate timeline with possible cross/overs now and again, with stand alone options too like Marvel are doing. All about the Big Picture. Hope they don’t screw it up like Xmen3.

The continuity between all the X-Men films is a mess. It’s hard for me to support it. First Class was a good enough movie in itself but it was littered with b-list X-Men and felt like an obscure spin-off. But ah well, doesn’t look like Fox has any intention of doing a proper reboot.

To clarify, I thought X2 was a pretty good movie. I also thought that some of the casting for these X-Men movies was spot-on (NOT Wolverine, however).

At this point, both Marvel and DC have raised the stakes on what it means to do a comic book movie, and I have little to no faith Fox can deliver the epic movies this franchise deserves. And to try to tie all of these mostly sub-par movies together? Sounds like a desperate move to me.

In my view, he best thing that could happen is that they make this movie, it bombs and they let the rights revert back to Marvel.

I’m curious, to be honest. And if it supposed to be explaining all of the things in the X-Series, I’d like one for the whole Sabretooth shenanigan, as in: why is he a smart psychopath who’s also Wolverine’s best friend/bro in Wolverine Origins, but a dumb brute who doesn’t seem to have an idea who Wolverine is in X-Men. Oh, and the supposed Deadpool in Wolverine Origins too. Explain those.

X-Men #1 & #2 were pretty decent efforts, but #3 did not impress me that much, and i was not a happy camper with the demise of jean, prof. X and especially Cyclops. Wolverine Origins was tolerable but nothing special, and First Class was pretty poor indeed, probably the worst of the lot (again, X-men #1 & #2 were good). If a reboot or sequel or something is going to happen, we need to see Cyclops–and ALOT of him as team field leader. We need to see Sentinels. We need ALOT less Wolverine and ALOT less Magneto (although Patrick Stewart and the fellow playing magneto in the first 3 movies were great choices). It’s just that we have been there and done that to death. I could handle the next movie without the characters of wolverine and magneto, and not be any the worse for wear. If they can incorporate some of this into it, i would be OK with another movie, and would of course buy the DVD for my collection, since I have all the others. Oh, and if Bishop and Cable were to put in an appearance, that would be OK, too. And time-travel…hmmm…Kang, perhaps? (OK, I know he would be more likely to fight The Fantastic Four or The Avengers…and that would be OK, also).

I have to agree with evilstuie completely. I think this could work out really well. Jean can be alive in the future easily enough and we know Professor X’s mind survived because he was in the body of the comatose victim on Muir Island at the end of X-men the Last Stand. Patrick Stewart could come back as the voice of the actor or perhaps in a clone of his orignal body. I think this could actually work. They could even do A george Lucas and refilm the scene at the beginning of Last Stand where Magento and Xavier meet Jean Grey with Fassbender and McEvoy. That would be awesome.

Ever since I heard that they were going to use time travel to supposedly resolve the continuity issues between X-Men:First Class and the first three movies, notwithstanding the X-Men Origins:Wolverine movie, I knew they were screwed. No one’s ever been able to use time travel to resolve any of this stuff. It only makes things worse. No matter how clever the time travel scenario, there’s always issues that come up.I’m trying to imagine how they will do it.

As I said in my post earlier replacing that scene in X-3 when they meet Jean Grey with one starring Fassbender and MeEvoy and also that scene in Wolverine where he sees Professor X for one with MeEvoy in his wheelchair problem sorted. Except for Halle Berry’s ham acting in X-3. Maybe they could CGI someone else over her instead. Cyclops can still come back he could have lost his glasses and been left with amnsesia, there is no evidence that he is dead.

first class was the first decent x-men film, but its still not the x-men we should be getting. now they’re gonna tie it back to the bad stuff. are we gonna find out how they make they’re cool black leather costumes? lol as others have said, wolvie and prof x were the best things about the X trilogy. the rest of the cast was TERRIBLE. Famke was maybe the least terrible, but they better not let berry, marsden or mckellen near this thing. they turned the great magneto into a skinny old man! i do hope they put bishop and cable in this. and maybe since marvel is doing thanos, fox will finally do apocalypse!

and I’m not just biased cause i read comics, the x-men trilogy are just BAD films, and very dated, the first one hasn’t aged well, and it’s pretty unwatchable IMO

Thank goodness someone else with some sense. I’ve been reading all these comments about X1 and X2 being better than X3 and they were just killing me. All three of the X-Men movies sucked with X2 being slightly less terrible than the others. First Class was the first X movie to succesfully showcase the use of the mutants powers and combine it with a with a good story and acting. Wolverine Origins was also much better than the first three X’s at combining action with story.
However for my money no matter how good a job Fox might do on any subsequent X-Men films (or Fantastic Four for that matter) I’d rather see the rights go back to Marvel so the whole universe of characters could cross-over into each others films. I really want to see the Hulk v Wolverine brawl on the big screen!

I am keeping my fingers crossed. Wolverine was a good movie except for the ending and they could twist that around to give us a decent Deadpool movie. I’m not sharing my ideas for that though. That’s a whole other ball game. One final point replace Vinnie Jones with a CGI Juggernaut as well. Nuff said. I am a fan of the comics and not so much the films but I love the opening scene in X-2, all of First Class and most of Wolverine. So please fox don’t screw it all up with a time travel mismash. Done right this could wipe the slate clean for a wholse slew of new movies like the new Star Trek, or at least tried to do, with some success.

At this point, I can’t believe some people are standing up for these poorly executed X-Men and Wolverine movies. Some people didn’t read the comics? Ya don’t say! They made two good movies, X2 and First Class. That’s it. Everything else was crap.

I disagree, becuase I really rate Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, and this more than saved the poor script and acting choices made. I also rated the idea, if not execution, of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. The first half he was too serious even with the jokes and the final scene was just the worst CGI fight sequence I have ever seen. I didn’t like the idea of making Deadpool into Weapon XI but it can still be written out for the Deadpool spin-off they’ll never make. I mean the guy was beheaded and has a healing factor they can use the helaing factor as a reason for his body to reject the other powers that were grafted onto him. But you are entitled to your opinion. As are we all. As a film series it’s not in league with the Matrix or Bored of The Rings but it’s getting there. At least their going in the right direction unlike George Lucas who went backwards with episodes 1 and 2, and a slight, slight, redemption with episode 3.

That’s fine, I’m hating on the movies, not the people that like them. I disliked the overblown Star Wars prequel trilogy, too. Much like I hated the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies. Much like I thought Spider Man 3 was a disaster (of my favorite character no less).

I just don’t see how anyone can defend them.
Daredevil?
Elektra (again, one of my favorite characters)?
The first Punisher?
X-Men 1 & 3?
The Ang Lee Hulk debacle?

Once again, I’d rather wait a few years for a good Marvel movie than see a bad/mediocre movie every year.

I agree with you on all scores but I kind of found Jennifer Garner twizzling those sai kind of hot. The only thing that scares me is that it’s not Marvel now it’s Disney and Buena Vista. They already changed part of the Avenegers on the UK Blu-Ray release and took away our commentary. I’m afrain Disney will see it as a money making machine rather than a decent franchise and ruin it. “Mickey Mouse as Cyclops”. Kind of cool for a laugh but not when you mess with my X-Men.

I hope you are right my friend. But I am not happy that the movie I pre-ordered ended up watered down and sans a director’s commentary. This is one fan they have already upset. Plus I wish they’d go regular universe over the messy rehash of old ideas that is Ultimate comics.

After reading X-men comics all through the 90′s and off an on in the 2000′s I have to say they have a wealth of storylines that they could use to tell X-men stories. I recently decided to go back and read everything X-men dating all the way back to the 1960′s. After reading all the way up to 1989 I realize how many great storylines could be translated to film if they had just started it right.

Honestly though I love and hate First Class for 2 reasons. I love it because it was actually a very good movie, and did a good job of working with the screwed up continuity that is Fox’s X-men franchise. I hate it because it is the most recent entry into the film series, and it’s popularity makes it impossible for Fox to just go back and do it right.

They should have just began with the original 5 X-men fighting Magneto like they did WAYYYY back in X-men #1. They could skip a lot between that story and Giant Size X-men #1 where they introduced the new lineup. In film they could just do a montage to highlight key points in the original team’s history leading up to the formation of the new team. From there they could tell stories like the Phoenix Saga, Mutant Massacre, etc.

I’m hoping that Singer uses the time travel theme of Days of Future Past to fix the screwed up timeline, but if he does he needs to find a way to do it so that it doesn’t make First Class irrelevant either….tough job for sure